48 ANIMALS OF NO IMPORTANCE. 



locusts moult or change their skins several times. At the 

 fourth moult the wings appear. 



Even a small plague of locusts, such as that which has 

 lately swept over the Himalayas, does a considerable 

 amount of damage, but this is as nothing compared with the 

 awful ravages of a really big swarm. History records many 

 instances. It is related that in the year 591 an infinite army 

 of locusts, of a size unusually large, grievously ravaged part 

 of Italy ; and being at last cast into the sea, from their stench 

 arose a pestilence, which carried off hundreds of thousands 

 of men and beasts. In the Venetian territory in 1478, more 

 than 30,000 persons are said to have perished in a famine 

 occasioned by these terrific scourges. Major Moor gave 

 some account of an army of locusts which ravaged the Mah- 

 ratta country many years ago. The column they composed 

 is said to have extended some five hundred miles, and so 

 compact was it, when on the wing, that, like an eclipse, it 

 completely hid the sun, so that no shadow was cast by any 

 object, and some lofty tombs, not more than two hundred 

 yards distant from the Major's residence, were rendered quite 

 invisible. These belonged to a red species of locust, and 

 they imparted to the trees, of which they had stripped the 

 foliage, a sanguine hue. 



Of late years there have been no very terrible plagues of 

 locusts. This, however, must be attributed more to good 

 fortune than to scientific progress. For, as regards methods 

 of destroying these insect pests, we have made but little ad- 

 vance since the day when the Bashaw of Tripoli raised a 

 force of 4,000 men to fight the locusts, ordering all to be 

 hanged who, thinking it beneath them to waste their valour 

 on such pigmy foes, refused to join the party. 



